‘A Debate for Three’ — An Introduction to the Trialectic

Few traditions in Western society have endured like the two-person debate. Having originated independently in civilisations as ancient and far-afield of each other as Athens in Greece and Shastrartha in India, the debate first became a fixture of European social life in London in the 1740s. Initially the restricted preserve of private clubs and secret societies, the debate eventually became an emblem of the Age of Enlightenment itself, as public debating societies welcomed participants of both genders and all walks of life to participate in a good intellectual spar while paying customers looked on.

Some 250+ years hence, and it has to come to feel that, if we have not come to live in the debate society, then we have certainly come to carry them around at all times in our pockets. The widespread balkanisation of discourse of all kinds, owing largely to the hostile conditioning of personal interaction and communication by social media, has led to increased polarisation. As personalisation algorithms that rule newsfeeds subject people to more views and perspectives amenable to their own, the gulf between the poles of a given issue broadens and buzzes with greater hostility. But this is a familiar story outlining a familiar problem. What is needed is some form of a solution.

One may have been found—in the course of investigating the flaws of the two-sided debate, and trying to make room in an existing debate scenario for a gifted third participant, the contestants and I hit upon the concept of the Trialectic. A trialectic is a debate format between three champions designed to test their ability to develop their knowledge through exposure to each other and the audience, as well as maximise the audience’s learning opportunities on a given motion.

The Origin of the Trialectic

At my old outlet Wonk Bridge, I was preparing to chair a debate on the subject of “Good faith” and “Bad faith”, and how both concepts interacted and mutually governed discourse and thought in the Early Digital age. This debate was to take place between two of Wonk Bridge’s most notable voices, Oliver Cox and Sebastian Vogelpoel. Sebastian had been inspired by Oliver’s assertions in his article, A Short Introduction to the Mechanics of Bad Faith, and a two-way discussion had been arranged to give the two authors outlet to go at it.

That was when, Ruoji Tang, a third of our most notable voices, entered the arena, brought to my attention that she too had been stimulated by Oliver’s piece and produced a response of her own: Some Thoughts on the Mechanics of Bad Faith. The natural instinct was to then invite her to participate in the debate. But how?

We could have installed Ruoji as a chairperson, but that wouldn’t do, minimising her ability to actively contribute to the back-and-forth.

We could have reframed the debate as a roundtable featuring three participants, though this would most likely result in a pleasant if rudderless discussion, without the interrogative fire (and possibility for conceptual breakthroughs) there to be harnessed in a competitive environment.

It seemed clear that the ideal format would be a three-sided debate. But how? All the conventions of Western debate have taken the need for polarities, for the presence of a ‘For’ party and an ‘Against’ party, as a given. Certainly, no one present had ever participated in a debate specifically primed to enable and balance the contributions of three participants before.

Working without much in the way of precedent, a three-sided debate, we decided, was to be used as an opportunity to escape some of the more limiting strictures of the two-sided debate. No more need for an issue to be discussed in purely oppositional terms, or according to polarities (“X is good” and “X is bad”), and no more need, therefore, to pretend that the correct perspective on, or solution to, a subject worth debating can be found entirely on one side or another. The three-sided approach would allow for a more interesting and subtle range of distinct positions to be initially adopted on a single and distinct motion, with more scope for the participants to move around freely in the spirit of disinterestedly investigating the subject together, instead of being placed on a rhetorical hill and expected to fight or die upon it.

This three-sided format could still be regulated to encourage the participants to produce all manner of rhetorical fireworks, to compose great oratory and be daring with their ideas, as in a two-sided debate. Meanwhile, such a new approach could be used not just to remove the stigma that is attached to changing your mind in a debate (which, though it may be a wiser option, amounts to a concession); no, it could actively reward the ability to show evidence of learning, mutual engagement and willingness to progress from an initial assertion. With Ruoji in the fold we could hold not a dialectic on the subject of bad faith, but a Trialectic.

At Wonk Bridge, we had made it a point of editorial principle to abhor the non-pluralistic, science-agnostic, ahistorical, narrative excesses that plague the global media environment — an environment which has made itself wealthy and powerful via the stoking and maintenance of division between people’s hearts and minds.

It was, therefore, most exciting to have developed this new approach to the discussion of unwieldy, difficult, or tough-to-apprehend topics between multiple actors, aimed not at victory for the best speaker, but at the mutual improvement of understanding. It is a method that neither gives over-incentive for participants to try and ‘defeat’ their opponents, nor one which allows speakers the luxury of easy conversation that avoids the forcible admixture of possibly incompatible ideas.

I hope it may be of use to you as well.

The Structure of a Trialectic

The Trialectic sees our three champions proceed through four distinct stages of debate, to provide the greatest range of opportunity to develop their knowledge. First comes the Opening, followed by the Tête-à-tête stage. Next, the Controversy; and finally, the Synthesis.

Point-Scoring in a Trialectic

In a Trialectic, the audience is twice invited to vote for the speaker they’ve found most persuasive: once immediately following the Opening stage (the Opening vote), and once immediately following the Synthesis stage (the Closing vote). A champion wins a Trialectic by demonstrating the greatest increase in votes from the Opening vote to the Closing vote, although any champion who ends the exercise with more points in the second vote than they received in the first can count themselves something of a winner.

To demonstrate how the point system works, let’s say that in the Opening vote of a Trialectic:

• Champion A receives 7-pts from the audience
• Champion B receives 7-pts
• Champion C receives 11-pts.

Then, in the Closing votes:

• Champion A receives 11-points
• Champion B receives 2-pts
• Champion C receives 12pts.

Following these votes, Champion A is pronounced the Trialectic winner with a difference in points of +4.

In the event a champion receives the highest number of votes in both Opening and Closing voting rounds, they will receive the Dual Crown Award for rhetorical flair and exceptional consistency in performance. In the case above, Speaker C will be given the Dual Crown Award with top-scores in both rounds.

Opening

Each champion is given 3–5 minutes to provide an opening thesis statement.

If the purpose of a Trialectic is to help its champions produce a more thorough synthesis of thoughts on a given subject, we must first start with what our champions already know and think.

Opening vote

The opening theses are followed by a preliminary vote by members of the audience, to determine who they feel gave the most well-conceived and complete initial statement on the topic.

Each participant awards 3pts, 2pts, and 1pt to the speakers according to who and which thesis was more convincing.

Tête-à-Tête

Each champion then engages in a one-to-one conversation with another champion in a round-robin format lasting 3–5 minutes, with a total round duration of around 15 minutes.

One of the customs of debate that is most obstructive to the development of new ideas is the fact that the players are at all times playing to the audience as much as they are addressing one another. However, the purpose of the trialectic is not to champion a given idea, but to formulate new ideas. To formulate new ideas requires reflection as well as competitive pressure; it requires the ability to doubt oneself, to probe with subtlety — these are qualities that are stigmatised in a live-wire debate, but ones to be admired in a conversationalist.

That’s why, immediately following the first vote, the champions are given the opportunity to simply discuss their ideas with one another, one-on-one, in the tête-à-tête.

As an unmoderated caucus format, the amount of time taken from or donated to the opposing champion is entirely up to the champions themselves. The degree of conflict or collaboration, the level at which they are listeners or speakers, are up to the styles and strategies adopted by the champions.

There will be a degree of combativeness on certain points during the tête; this is to be welcomed, but persistent interruptions are not. The chairperson reserves the right to make points deductions for any champion who repeatedly interrupts their partner.

Controversy

During the Controversy, the debate opens to the floor. Here, the champions spend 10 minutes taking questions from the audience. Audience members can address the questions openly or specifically to champions. Procedural privileges remain with the debate’s chairperson.

In the tradition of the town-hall format, the champions will need to adapt the register they use to discuss. With nowhere to hide, they will engage the audience with the authenticity and vulnerability it deserves.

Synthesis

Each champion is given 3–5 minutes to provide their synthesis.

The syntheses represent the Trialectic’s closing remarks. This is where our champions have the opportunity to show the growth in understanding they’ve undergone during the debate.

The focus for each champion is not on one final disputation of their opponents, but on building a holistic picture of the motion which encompasses the components of their original thesis that remain, as well as whatever new insights they, the champion, have picked up along the way.

During the syntheses, champions may make it clear those points that they remain in disagreement with, and they might also make it clear which of their fellow speakers’ points they’ve assimilated into their own thinking. Few things are more indicative of growth-of-mind than the ability to honour the good work of an opponent.

Closing Vote

The chairperson will call for a Closing vote. The audience will once again be invited to attribute their three scores (3,2,1 points) to the champions. The chairperson will determine who has increased their voting share the most, and who is thus the Trialectic Winner. The chairperson will also determine the Dual Crown Award Winner.

Observations

Optimum Styling During Trialectics

Trialectic Winners will generally have made a point of clearly foregrounding their subject in their Opening thesis — depending on the topic at hand, a lot of people attending are unlikely to be familiar with it. A winner will combine what’s best in a champion of dialectic or hall debate with what’s best in a dinner party companion. Flair, wit, perspicacity, concision and pith, generosity and the power to evidence listening, a means to assess the subject comprehensively — with quantitative as well as qualitative elements — and the communicative ability to make the complex plain; all of them will stand a champion well during a Trialectic.

The point of a trialectical, three-person discussion is not to be a debate between diametric opposites, but neither is it supposed to be a soft-touch chat where the participants wallow in agreement or merely move in unincorporated private circles relative to a subject. Participants should be spirited in contest, or seek to assimilate or contest other speakers’ points, to whatever degree best serves the expansion of their knowledge on a subject and their apprehension of its truths.

Victory?

Why even have the concept of ‘victory’ in a structure of discourse that prizes reconciliation? Is this not a contradiction in nature? From one perspective, yes — but there is something persistent in the wider intellectual constitution now which is altogether too settled on the idea of relative truth, of a salad-bowl approach to putting many thoughts in one place without testing their ability to meld and combine.

Trialectical modes of discussion oblige both the defeat of weightless and unevidenced points of view and the concession on the part of one speaker that they, almost certainly, did not come to the table with all necessary insights about the subject in question already in their possession. That they, in their quest for understanding, may have been wrong, or have held knowledge that was incomplete

To reconcile such opposing forces of thought is not easy. To be able to ‘win’ in a trialectic is the necessary incentive, therefore, for champions to pursue unified thought on a subject, brought about by both contest and reconciliation, not merely as a private pursuit, or an optional practice — but as the moral of the exercise.

On such a note…

Why We Need the Trialectic

Our time suffers from its polarisation. This is news to no one. All the vices of the debate hall — pettyfogging, rampant playing to the gallery, skill in insult, pursuits where discreditation of the opponent is an aim, not an incidental by-product, of aggressive discussion — are the vices of the average citizen, discoursing with their neighbour or with a stranger that might as well be their neighbour. Those tendencies listed above are, perhaps not coincidentally, the vices of anti-intellectualism.

This derives from a fallacious way of viewing the world in terms of polarity — I am right, or I am wrong. You are with me, or you are against me. There is this way, and the other. In almost no field of pursuit is such absolutism profitable — it is particularly useless when we consider how effective new technologies and means of communication are in revealing the complexity of our world and of human thought and behaviour to us. Not only is the sphere of available knowledge expanding faster than can be measured, but global circumstances are shifting faster than ever too.

Global discourse is in need of structured means of discussion in which the final outcome is not dominance or the absolute defeat of one party in a polarised dynamic, but understanding.

In such a set of circumstances, our approach to discussing issues and scrutinising ideas requires a process that is both adequately reductionist[1] and aimed ultimately not at the victory of one side or another, but on each party’s mutual improvement.

The trialectic answers the call.

Additions and Amendments to the Format

From time to time I will update this document with new ideas that may add depth or provide fresh angles of perspective on the trialectic. Each one will be dated.

November 5th 2021 — Questioning Assumptions

This addition to the trialectic format confers a new importance on the chairperson and obliges a new rigour from the champions. In the revised 5/11/21 format, each champion should declare at the end of their Opening statement each of the assumptions they have made about the subject being debated, such that those assumptions have formed their initial position.

The chairperson will then take stock of these assumptions, having also been sent them prior to the commencement of the trialectic, and make a note of them. The chairperson will then interrogate the opening argument for assumptions that may not have been declared — the chairperson will then, following the Synthesis but prior to the declaration of the trialectic winner, list any additional assumptions, pertinent to the discussion, that the chairperson has found and which were not declared. The chairperson may then subtract one point from a champion for each assumption they failed to disclose.

It is very rare in systematic discussion beyond fields of scholarship takes a rigorous approach to identifying and examining the presumption that may underlie an argument and ultimately inflect it with bias. This school of analytical thought is particularly barren in political and bureaucratic discussions. There may be no healthier component of a trialectic, nothing more likely to drive it away from a thirst for straightforward victory and towards the possibility of enlightenment, than obliging champions humble their own arguments, and be rewarded for doing so faithfully and comprehensively.

[1] Reductionism is an epistemological approach in experimental psychology whereby an idea or hypothesis is interrogated for every dimension in which it could possibly be wrong, inconsistent, or prone to produce an otherwise unforeseen harmful outcome. Ideas that survive a reductionist critique with their basic tenets intact are to be considered strong ones.